The Kardashian (Part III): Armenian Rock n' Roll

This week, Connie and I deep-dive the controversial life (and loves) of Robert Kardashian - the patriarch of today's Kardashian clan. 

Think you know who Robert Kardashian was? Think again. 

From strange ties in the music industry, to a controversial relationship with a seventeen-year-old child, Robert Kardashian was a man of contradictions. And a man who drove around in a Rolls-Royce with a Jesus fish in the window. 

This is the (true) story of Robert Kardashian. 

Selected Source:

• Carson, M. (2024, October 10). Juicing the charts: Robert Kardashians. Mxdefying. https://mxdefying.substack.com/p/juicing-the-charts-robert-kardashians

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Hello, hello, hello, everyone, and welcome back to Scandal Queens. It is me, your host EB, the de influencer you love or love to hate, and I am back, back, back again with another installment in the epic Kardashian saga. That's right, today we're going to be talking about the infamous Kardashian patriarch Robert Kardashian. And here to help me tackle this heavy topic, once again is my dear, dear friend Connie joining me all the way from the other side of the world. Hello, Connie.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Hello, hello, hello, everyone. How are you? I am alive as per usual. I survived the time between the last time we recorded.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Yeah, this is this is actually our second go-around. Uh, we tried to record this a couple days ago, and technology hated us. So uh hopefully you will be hearing this one today because, like it says on the 10, we're gonna be talking about the big one, the big fish in the Kardashian story. Robert Kardashian, uh, the father of Kim Kardashian, Chloe Kardashian, Courtney, and Robert Kardashian as well. Um, for me, this is where the rubber kind of meets the road in the Kardashian story. It's the link that we can kind of draw between the Kardashians of the past and the Kardashians that we know today. Because when you look at the when you look at Robert Kardashian as a person, I think you really do kind of find the median, right? You find this like transition point between what the Kardashians were, which is this like evangelical scammer family that we've been talking about, religious zealots, you know, selling snake oil to vulnerable people, and what the Kardashians are today, entrepreneurial con artists selling snake oil to vulnerable people. So I think we see that transition from the old to the new in Robert Kardashian. He's like that famous Chintong River title boar in China that I can sit and watch videos of for hours and hours. Um, he's you know, this leader of the modern Kardashian is the clash between the old and the new. He's a clash which, as I think you'll see, created the conflict and the drama that the family is synonymous with today. So while his daughters, every time you hear them talk about Robert, they paint him as this like saint, and he sounds like such this peaceful, easygoing, just really good-natured, solid guy. I it in my personal opinion, he was anything but that. So in this episode, I think we're gonna explore that. We'll explore his humanity a bit, and along the way, hopefully, make a little more sense out of the absurdity of the family as we see it today. Now, again, we have a lot to get through, so no temperature check, uh, just too much, too dense. And we're gonna try to squeeze it all into one episode. Hopefully, we don't have to do like an episode three and a half. We'll see. Um, so no temperature check. We're just gonna get right into things because we have a lot to talk about, not the least of which is OJ Simpson and the mafia. Now, I do want to say before I begin, the big source for today's episode that I would highly recommend to everybody go and check out is uh the Substack Miss Defying, Miss Defying on Substack. Uh, that is the writer is Melanie Carlson. She's done a huge deep dive, way, way, way, way deeper than I'm gonna be able to go into today on Irving Asoff, the music industry, how the Kardashians specifically tied in through all these little events. Um, more about Robert Kardashian's businesses in the music industry. I mean, the the research that this writer has had collated all into one place. Absolutely incredible. So, mystifying on Substack, please go and check that out if you want more context than I'm gonna give you in this episode. It's crazy the research she's done. Right, Connie, you ready? Yeah, we're coming for you, Bobert. We're coming for you. Bobbert, Bobbert, Bobber. I'm gonna have to remember that, right? Robert Bobber Kardashian was born in 1944, shortly before his grandfather Tados Kardashian joined forces with the mystic faith healer Aivok Hagopian and the cult leader William Branham. His father was Arthur Kardashian, the eldest of Tados Kardashian's children, and Arthur was born in 1917, just a few short years after Tados arrived in Los Angeles and married Hama Shikarian. Arthur Kardashian had made it big by the time his son and second eldest child, Robert Kardashian, was born in 1944. Because if you'll remember, uh, when we talked about the history of the Kardashians and the Shikarians, the Shikarians owned one of the biggest herds of cattle in the United States by the 1940s. And they owned something called Reliance Dairies, which was one of the biggest dairies on the West Coast. So it was just natural that Arthur just kind of extend and get in on that family business by establishing the Great Western Packing Company, a meat packing company based in Los Angeles. Easy jump to make. He's already got access to it through the Sharkar through the Shikarians. And by 1944, Great Western Packing, just like Reliance Dairies, is one of the biggest in the United States. So while his father, while Arthur's father, Taitos, was slinging preachers across the globe and making connections with the future famous Graham family and William Branham, Arthur went into the meat slinging business, a business one of his sons would later claim was rife with corruption and mafia ties. So this makes Arthur, who is partnered up with his cousin Isaac Shikarian, a multi-millionaire by the time Robert is born in 1944, thanks in no small part to a huge government contract he got to supply his meat to the US military during World War II, which is just one of the first of many government ties we're gonna see with the yeah, exactly Connie, Connie's rule in her eyes.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

You know, them government contracts are fucking big, too.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yeah, yep, yep, yep. So this means that by the time Robert's born in 1944, Kardashians are living on EZ Street, multi, multi-millionaires in the 1940s. Robert is the second of three children that Arthur would have, and all three of them grow up cushy, cushy, cushy in one of the nicest brand new spanking neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Like just it's a lot different. All of this is a lot different than what we've been told because it's like, oh, grandpa started a meat packing plant and did the immigrant grift, and he got all the way up to the top with the American dream. And it's like, no, we didn't. You guys were already wealthy because the Mollocans came to the United States with a ton of fucking money. They married into more wealthy people, and all of these people were sanctioned by all these white ass supremacists, and you guys leaned into that and just completely sold your souls, and you got government contracts and did all this shady shit. Like, no, you got rich because you were already rich. Like it's so frustrating. It's just completely different than what's been said, and people just choke it down. They just choke it down. It drives me nuts.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

It's not surprising uh that you know they want to cut off the the first stages. God forbid they actually acknowledge the actual beginnings because that would actually tell people what has been happening.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah, a hundred percent. It sets you up to understand the pattern. So, anyways, Robert and his siblings grow up in the kind of life that your average kid could only dream of. They live in a house in the View Park subdivision of Los Angeles, which at the time is one of the best, best, best. That's where like the richest and most powerful people in Los Angeles live in the 1940s, is in View Park, Los Angeles. And interestingly, what I found when I started looking into this neighborhood um is that it is uh famous now for being called like the Black Beverly Hills. But before the 1960s, it was actually illegal to live in that neighborhood unless you were white. There was literally laws that said you could not live in that neighborhood unless you were white, uh, and you couldn't even have minorities there unless they were a servant of the household. Uh that was literally the law of the neighborhood in the 1940s when the when the Kardashians moved in, which I find quite odd. Find that very odd personally, considering the considering what we've already talked about with their ties with certain people. But the Kardashians lived there. Robert Kardashian was raised there with his siblings until they gravitated toward Beverly Hills in the 1960s during what was called the, I believe it was called the white migration, is what they called it, or white flight. Yeah. So it around 1960s, yeah, there was this neighborhood that the Kardashians had lived in for like 20 years, and black people started moving into it legally because the federal government had ruled you can't tell someone they can't live somewhere because of their race. So, because of that, California had to start letting black people live in these rich neighborhoods because they had the money to live in these rich neighborhoods, and so it was called white flight, and all the white people started moving out of these areas and going to like Beverly Hills and Calabasas. Dead, you can Google all this.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Whoa. Yep. Shocker. Yep. Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

It's crazy. So the creek, the three Kardashian siblings grow up in this kind of environment with absolutely everything. They go to Susan Miller Dorsey High School, which at the time, surprise, surprise, because don't you know I went straight to look up the history of this school, plagued, plagued by all of these uh racial incidents, basically all the way until the 1960s, when again they were like the government went, hey, Susan Miller Dorsey High School, you have to let black people go there. You have you can't bust them to schools farther away. That's crazy. Um, which again was happening in the white flight stuff. But all the way through the 50s and the 60s when Robert Kardashian was there, the school was in the paper multiple times for doing things to block black students from being in the schools. There was petitions and like picket lines and and letters to the paper multiple times from the handful, because black people were the minority in this neighborhood because of everything that had happened. Um, just tons, there was lots of racial problems at the school. It was like a very much like clan school. We'll just put it that way. It was a clan school.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Doesn't this go hand in hand with that whole idea? Like a lot of the time when we see pictures from these schools from that era, they end up being in black and white on purpose to make everyone feel like it was a much older time. Yeah, whereas realistically the the 50s and 60s, like our grandparents.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Yeah, this is happening like 15 years before Kim Kardashian's born.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

It's like that's not even a whole two mums away. No, if you think about it. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's not even a mum and a grandma away. That's literally like right there. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

No, it's like it's yesterday. Like you could probably go and talk to your parents about some of these things, depending on how old your parents are. It's it's really, really crazy. And so the the Kardashians grow up in this View Park, Los Angeles. They go to the Susan Miller-Dorsey High School. 1960s, black people are allowed to move into the area. Clan comes into View Park and starts burning crosses in people's front yards in this View Park neighborhood. The Kardashians leave sometime around this. Uh, whatever Robert Kardashian's opinions were on this environment, we will never know because he was out the door of Susan Dorsey High School. Susan Miller Dorsey High School. How many names do you need? Was fully integrated uh by the 60s and he he was gone. So he left high school around 1962, 1963, heads to the University of Southern California, where Robert gets a degree in business administration. And this would be an important time for Robert, I think, because it's according to there's so there's two stories. There's two stories about how Robert Kardashian met O.J. Simpson. I think they could both maybe be true. I don't know. The story is that while he was at USC, Robert Kardashian was a water boy for the football team. And OJ Simpson, this is when he blew up and became really, really famous, was in college as an as a football player before he went to the NFL. Yeah. So the story is that Robert Kardashian met him as a water boy and became friends with the juice, which I mm, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know. And then he'll meet him again in 1970, which we'll go into here, which is when they start partying together and become like BFFs. But this college, these college years, these later college years, I think are really, really important because you start to see Robert shaping this persona, which is gonna kind of morph and Cronenberg itself into something really, really nasty when he gets involved in the music industry. So the the meeting with OJ Simpson, 1960s, you know, if it's true, very, very fortuitous. It seems to trigger potentially this like glitz and glam lifestyle that he gets to rub elbows with this, and he's a rich boy who can get himself into doors and like have celebrity buddies. So by 1966, Robert graduates from USC, heads to San Diego, where he goes to law school, and he graduates with his JD. Now that does happen. That is that part of the story is true. But now this is where I think this is a really big deal, right? Because this is the start of his little lawyer saga. And when you hear about the Kardashians, when they talk about their father, they talk about him like he was this lifetime, lifelong attorney. Like he was he law, he made his living in law, law was his life. He loved practicing law. Like they really ride this Robert Kardashian was an attorney thing. Uh, but not quite true. Not quite true. It is true, but kind, but not not like the Kardashians said it was. Surprise, surprise.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

How else are they gonna explain away a bunch of his like accumulated wealth from his family? Yeah, like yeah, palmer off to the fact that a big shot lawyer might make a lot of money.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Yeah, like it's that's that's an easier pill to swallow than uh no, Daddy was was involved in some really shady things in the record industry, which is how we made most of our money. But here's so here's the thing with the attorneys, and there's a couple reasons why I think they just kind of glaze over it and just kind of use this as a blanket statement because as it turns out, Robert was an attorney for a short time, right? He did go to San Diego, he got a law degree, and he got a law degree and goes straight to a little boutique firm called Emer and Bedrossian, which is yes, is an Armenian firm. Surprise, surprise. Now it doesn't look like it was too hard for Robert to walk in and get his name on the door, straight, straight out of graduating with his law degree, which is absolutely absolutely wild because they were both Armenian American lawyers who had been running this boutique law firm for years. So it's very, very likely that the Shikarians, the Kardashians, the Agajanians, one of them, and these families are all married and intermingled, probably were friends or went to church with these lawyers or their families because that's how this system worked. Um, really interestingly, though, right? I went, well, I wonder who who are Emer and Bedrossian? Like, who is that? Let's have a little look into them. Uh, because it turns out that Emer and Badrossian, while Kardashian was working for them, created one of the largest for-profit hospital operators in the United States. In 1969, Richard Emer and John Bedrossian became one of three co-founders of National Medical Enterprise, which later became tenant healthcare. All three of the founders were attorneys who wanted to bring, and I quote, corporate management to the fragmented hospital market in Southern California. And they built a network of acute care hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and rehab centers throughout the 70s and 80s. So the privatized American healthcare system, they're a part of it. They're a part of that disgusting the reason you have to go and pay like 20 grand to get gauze on the gunshot wound that you got from a cop. Like they're a part of that. They're a part of jacking up for profit. They said it themselves, corporatizing health care in America, privatizing it, corporatizing it. Absolutely nuts. So Robert is working for these two men as a lawyer. Very, very gross, but he doesn't last long. Now, his family has said he was an attorney. He was an attorney, he was an attorney. He was an attorney for a few years because by the time we get to the 1970s, Robert Kardashian's run into OJ again. His brother is mingling with the ex-wife of one of Elvis' tour managers, and they're being spotted out around Beverly Hills with this, like you know, fucking Scarface kind of 70s crew, and they're they're considered to be some of the most eligible bachelors in the Beverly Hills area by this time. He and his brother.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

So it seems they've got money behind them, right? So tons of money.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Multi, multi-millionaires, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

That they're not rubbing elbows with these sorts of people would be silly at this point.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Yeah, maybe. But I think I think they're the older Kardashians seem to be more sober. There was actually, I was on Mollikan, M-O-L-O-K-A-N-E.org, Molliken.org. It does a lot of research into their families, and they do actually there was an article written from one of the elders, and it was an Armenian Mullican elder, and they're called like D Debrovdi or something. That's like it's Russian. You lose me. So there was a letter from one of the elders, and they said there's a split happening in our community, and we have the the elders within our community being very sober, being responsible, being respectable, starting businesses, going to church. And our young people are now being dazzled by the lights of Hollywood and what they see on TV and in the magazines, and they're trying to copy it, and their parents are giving them American names and not Christian names, and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. So I think this is during that split. This is probably like an esc escalation of that split. So very interesting, very interesting stuff. Too deep down the rabbit hole. So, anyways, by the 1970s, Robert Kardashian's running around, party boy, with his younger brother Tom, and he seems to be not focusing on the sober life of an attorney anymore. He wants to lean into this eligible bachelor thing. He's seen all the time with OJ Simpson. It's allegedly during this time in 1970 that they meet on a tennis court and basically become inseparable. Within a few years, they're doing businesses together, they're partying together, they're traveling together, they're at each other's weddings, you know, just all this kind of stuff. By 1973, so I think Robert graduated like 1968 or something with his law degree. By 1973, he quits law. He gives up his license. He's no longer an attorney and he starts his own company. He just goes, Law's not for me, walks away from Emer Bedrossian, and decides he's gonna step into the wild, wild world of all things, the American music industry. He decides it's time to get into the record industry in 1973, which is a is a hell of a choice. Is a hell of a choice because context time, one of my favorite tabs, historical context time.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

We love context. We love context.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

So they're just we're just gonna do again. This is gonna be very short. I'm gonna breeze through a lot of thick and heavy shit as quickly as possible. If you want to know more about this, this is when you need to go to that article on Substack um for mystifying. I can't remember. It's called like Juicing the Charts, I'm pretty sure is the name of it. Um, on Melanie Carlson's Substack. But the American music industry in the 1970s, into the 1980s, was uh horrific. It was rife. The whole thing was crime, the whole thing was being run by the mafia, the mob, and all this stuff. It was an absolute mess. And I think if we understand a little bit of how that is, you will be like, Well, why the fuck did Robert Kardashian do that? It points to something going on in his character 100%, because in the 1970s things were a mess and it had taken it'd been years. That wasn't just like suddenly in the 1970s, newspaper picked up a story and went, Holy shit, the music industry is really, really bad. It started in the 1950s because from 1956 to 1958, there was this huge scandal. And it turns out the two major networks, CBS and NBC, because again, there was only like four channels back during this time, but it turns out from 1956 to 1958, it was revealed that the network television shows that people watched, they were rigged. They rigged the contestants, they pre-arranged the outcome. Certain contestants had been pre-selected to win things. They were given answers by the producers before filming. And this was a big, big, big, big, big deal because it implicated basically all of the big game shows from CBS and NBC specifically, like the $64,000 question for lover money, the big surprise in 21. I used to really like watching these when I was sick at home in bed as a kid. Um, these shows had high stakes, big, life-changing money prizes, right? So, this isn't like someone just wins a new refrigerator set. These people were getting enough money to like buy a house. Some people were being gifted houses, they could pay off mortgages, they could send their kids to college. Like this is big, big deal money. So people got pissed, piss, piss, piss, piss, piss. And it got so bad, the game show scandal got so bad that the American government had to get involved and they had to create a bunch of new laws to try to regulate the entertainment industry. But it didn't work because by the 1960s, record labels like CBS were in an entirely new, bigger, worse scandal. Because if you thought like pre pre-arranging the ending of a game show was bad, uh, investigations by federal agencies in the 1960s revealed a massive payola scam that ran the entirety of the industry. So essentially, what would happen is you would get as an artist, you would get assigned to a label. The label would then go to disc jockeys like Dick Clark and go, We'll give you $10,000 to play nothing but this label and to talk about how great it is and to tell everyone how much you're getting requests for it. Make it look really, really popular, play it so that people think it's pop. And it turned into every label doing this big giant scam. All the biggest artists you know, you know them because they had money behind them, straight up. I who knows what we lost, but it turned into this huge thing. Dick Clark got into trouble. He had to sell off a bunch of stock that he had bought because, again, it was basically insider trading. Alan Freed, I think, was the guy who ended up taking the fall for it. He either went to prison or he had like fine probation. He was the one that was all over the newspapers for this. And then by the 1970s, when Robert Kardashian decides to get into it, it's literally run by the moth. 1973, the same year that Robert Kardashian joins the industry with the backing of Irving Azov, Clive Davis, who goes on to work with Diddy and Lou Taylor, he is implicated in this giant scandal and has to exit as president of CBS Records because it revealed it was revealed that CBS Records was literally being run as a front for the mob, for the literal fucking mafia in 1973. And this is big news. It's the front page of every paper that, and you know, people read the papers back in this day. People listen to the nightly news on the radio and stuff. So this forced exit of Davis was a bombshell, and it came after years of investigations. It just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. And Clive Davis specifically, this is this is like a crazy story to me. The reason Clive Davis went down in 1973, this industry that Robert decides to get into, it's because a known Jersey mobster, a known mobster, Pasquale Falcone, the feds are looking into him, and as they're tracking what he's doing, they find out that he has an office in Columbia Records, which is owned by CBS. He has his own office in Columbia. And they're like, why does a mafia drug mule have an office in Columbia? Well, it turns out the mob now owns the record industry, they're using it as a front, and it's still the same payola schemes, but now they're paying off whoever they need to pay off, whether that's radio DJs, local promoters, bands themselves, anybody, they're doing it with women. They're doing it with lots and lots of different drugs, a lot, a lot, a lot of cocaine and some money. And they're selling opportunities like, oh, well, my buddy knows Ronald Reagan. So if you do this for us and you get this. Music in there, da da da da da. It's a whole crooked fucking thing, and the whole thing is being run by the mafia in the music industry at this time. Not even kidding. They the mafia members have their own offices in these record studios. So Clive Davis gets fired because of that, even though he says, Well, I don't know. I didn't know. I didn't know he was in the mob. He gets fired anyway. Um, whole huge scandal. Morris Levy of Roulette Records ends up being exposed as an arm of the mafia. He's an associate of thinking of the Gambino crime family during this time. So he gets fired. It's a it's a fucking giant mess. I think Atlantic 2 ends up getting drawn into it. You again, you'll have to go and like read either Stiff, which is an incredible book about this, specifically MCA's involvement in all this, or go and read that that mystifying from Mel Melanie Carlson. So yeah, this is this is what Robert Kardashian during this time when all the news of the music industry was mafia, mafia, mafia, he decides to quit his job as an attorney and get into which is very suspicious, I think. I personally I find that suspicious.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah, I mean, like, weren't we wasn't there a whole thing we were talking about in the like the previous episodes? How like essentially their whole family is the mafia of like the it started off with the rubbish collection.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

And now they're then they cornered the dairy area. Yeah. Like, and they're rubbing elbows with the mafia through all of that as well.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

There were eventually one of them, there's a bunch of arrests on the Kardashians throughout the 70s because of federal investigations. I think one of them was ended up being a trash monopoly one. There's two big arrests that happen um over their meat packing business, federal felony arrests. But yeah, it's this. Exactly. Exactly. It's crazy. It's crazy. Oh, right. So this is the world that Robert Kardashian gets in into 1973, leaving his cushy attorney jab in a rearview mirror with his brother and a popular daytime radio DJ in tow, he actually just says, you know what, we're gonna go found a little company called Radio and Records. And this Radio and Records is an industry publication that shares news, charts, trending music, and all this kind of stuff for for the big labels in Los Angeles to follow. It's an interesting job to pick at an interesting time because even though the music industry was incredible, incredibly profitable at this time, there's an uh newspaper article where it said apparently the music industry was one of the biggest industries in the entire world. And in the 70s, it was netting billions, like 20 billion a year or something like that. So it was basically the biggest business you could get into. It was also widely known, as I just told you, to be a cesspool for organized crime, which something that Robert's brother would later allege that they were trying to leave behind through the family business, which he basically says is tied to organized crime. But nonetheless, Robert Kardashian sets out to establish RR, and he does it with the endorsement of an interesting fellow named Irving Azov. Uh now, if you're on Patreon, I've already done an extra little mini soda that's got more information about Irving Azov. Uh, because that is a that is a rabbit hole. That is he these he's got so much history, we can't possibly go into it, you know, all here. So I'm just gonna quickly go over Azoff and why it's so important that he and Kardashian are tied together because this is kind of where our again, this is where you see the twist, I think. Now, Irving Azov, interesting character. Most people nowadays know him as the shameless former head of Live Nation Ticketmaster, the behemoth monopoly of the music industry that just got convicted of antitrust behavior. Um, but in the 1970s, Azov was a big shop manager. He managed Steely Dan, the Eagles, Ario Speed Wagon, just any big name you can think of. He he represented them and managed them and blew them up. He's a big name in Los Angeles, and he would go on to become the head of MCA Records in the 1980s, but he did not start out that way. Irving Azov actually grew up as a relatively unremarkable kid in Illinois. He was born a few years after Robert Kardashian 1947, and he grew up in that rock and roll explosion. In the 1960s, he went to a concert, it was his first concert, The Beach Boys, and according to Azov, it changed his life. He he stood there in the crowd, watched it, and went, This is what I'm gonna do. But he didn't sing he didn't dance, he didn't play any instruments. So, what's a kid like that to do? He starts booking bands for teen dances while he's in high school, and he's selling hundreds of tickets to these things because team teen dances are super, super popular back in the 70s, and they'll have them in like church halls and gymnasiums and all that stuff, and it's just it's big, big business. And interestingly, while he's in high school, Irving Azov reaches out to Frank Barcelona of Premier Talent in 1964, and this guy's an also a known mafia associate. Again, again, these guys just are gonna keep coming up, especially with Azov. This is like his first of big many. So he's doing some work with Frank Barcelona and he's selling these tickets to and he's like promoting bands while he's in high school. After Azov goes off to college in 1966, he catches the eye of Bob Nutt, a local music promoter in the college town of Champaign, Illinois, where they have the University of Illinois Urbana Champagne. Now, Nutt around 1967 starts his own music management and promotion business, and it's called Blytham Limited, and that's in 1967. And immediately, almost immediately after he does this, he azoff just pops up, and the two become best friends, and he brings Azoff right into the business to work with him. Again, Azoff's still in college. But here's what's interesting about Bob Nutt. He was a member of the student government at the University of Illinois, okay? And specifically, he was a member of the student government the year that they received a huge sum of money from the CIA, a huge like thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars that Bob Nutt received as part of the student government from the CIA, which is fucking weird. It's weird if you know the history of the CIA and what was going on at the time with them co-opting music and counterculture. Yep, yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

You know, you know, this is one of my favorite like side quests brain thoughts because the CIA kept putting money into like movies and music and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Oh my god, bingo, bingo.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

So we don't know the full deal of the CIA, but we do know that within a few short months of Nut and AZOF going to work on Blythe Unlimited, promoting and managing bands around their little corner of Illinois, they start advertising shows and bands in paper where the NSA is also advertising in the same paper for workers. In the same paper, the same day they're published together. Just very interesting. And the NSA, for those that don't know, that's the American intelligence agency that like spies on phones and computers and does all the intelligence gathering and stuff. Very sinister stuff. Uh, that one is advertising just coincidentally in the same paper that that Azov and Nut are advertising in. Very, very weird. Very, very weird because also during this time around like 1970, Azov opens a hippie clothing business uh in this town, which gets boycotted by the actual hippies who say this is this this is not a real hippie company. This person is trying to co-opt hippie culture, it's very sinister. Don't buy from here because there's something shady going on with this business. So there's weird ties. They were trying to do like the fast fashion of the 70s, basically. Yeah, but people were kind of like it all it has connotations of the CIA co-opting counterculture because that was the accusation to boycott. They're like, they're co-opting counterculture. This guy's a square, don't buy from here. Very weird.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

We need to bring that back. We need to bring the the calling people with square back. I think that is the funniest insult.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Yeah, I I second that. I second that. Um, whatever Nut Nazoff had going on, it worked within a year. They're managing 45 plus bands in the area, including like huge bands. There's there's bands who are big locally, like the one-eye jacks, but they also had Ario Speedwagon on their list while they're still in college. Yeah, yeah. This is where like Ario Speedwagon got their start.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

Holy shit!

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Yeah, dead dead serious. If you go and look up Blytham Limited, you can see their little pictures of their adverts. Um, that substack has the pictures. Uh, there's the pictures from the paper of the adverts and then Ario Speedwagons on these little college adverts to play in the area. The connections, the connections, the connections. So, how did Nut Nazoff uh wield this new power? They have this huge new management agency. They're managing bands like One Eye Jax and Rio Speedwagon. How did they how did they do with that power? Uh they became monsters, they acted like fucking monsters with it, according to local band members. Connie's cracking up.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Oh, I just heard like only heard was Nut and Aizolf. And I was like, what are you thinking?

SPEAKER_00 30:17

I did that on purpose. Yeah. It sounds absurd because it is. Because it is. Anybody with CIA ties is fucking absurd. All of them. But according to the locals, uh, local band members, just locals who were around at the time, there's a bunch of videos. Again, if you go to that Substack, she's got the videos that you can go and watch of people who were alive during this time talking about uh what this was like. But uh AZOF and Bob Nutt were regularly heard screaming into phones at local venue managers for not obeying their demands, they would make threats. Uh, how many of those threats were carried out? I don't really know. But we do know that uh I think it was it Henley, Don Henley from the Eagles. He said, Azoff is Satan, but he's our Satan. Just like everyone knows he's a piece of shit. And they're just like, Yeah, this is great. Let's work with this guy. Just nuts. Um, by the end of the 60s, was that?

SPEAKER_01 31:01

I'm just mad. They're just ruining Satan's good name like that. What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 31:04

I know, I know, I know. But yeah, these these are all boomers, you know what I mean? So these they uh might be talking to a boomer about Satan, I think, is a lot like talking to what it would be like to talk to a Salem pilgrim, a Salem person about Christ. Like I think they pretty much have the same concept of the devil. If you've ever talked to a boomer about the devil, it's like a real person. So by the end, by the end of the 60s, Blythem agency was being referred to in the Alini, which is a local newspaper, as a monopoly. There's whole big write-ups about how Azoff and and Bob Nutt are acting as a monopoly. They shut out everyone else who wasn't inside their walls with hostile and forceful tact. This is who Azov was in the early 70s when he jet set off from Illinois, leaving his champagne life behind. Uh, and nobody knows why. You cannot find details on what happens. Just all of a sudden, he's got this very successful little music thing going, picks up sticks, fucks off to California without Bob Nutt, leaves him completely behind. And people said after that, like Blytham agency just basically Blythem Limited just basically collapses on itself. Very interesting is that um Bob Nutt died, I think in 2018. He died homeless, he died mentally, like they said he was mentally completely gone. He was just babbling to himself about nonsense that no one believed or understood. They found him in a vacant house in like 2018, and then they had a big musical charity concert for him after he died super mentally ill alone in a house. Which, what does that make you think of when you know about all the CIA stuff and all the people who have died as homeless vagrants babbling to themselves in vacant houses after being tied to the CIA? Yeah, yeah. It's weird. I'm not look- look, I know that they're not necessarily connected, right? But it's it's a weird pattern. It's a weird pattern. If you if you if you guys are listening to this and you're confused, please go listen to last podcast on the left, MK Ultra series, and you will not be confused anymore.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

My brain is like full of it. Melted, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Holy shit.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

Yep, very scary. He that he died the way so many.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Oh my god. I feel bad for that dude. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

I I I wonder if he maybe wasn't involved in some of the like uh LSD programs.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

So I've I've seen people stuck in trips before, man. They were babbling, they don't know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

Yeah, they said his mind was fractured, is how people who saw him at the end described it specifically. Very sad. But Asoff went on to become the biggest manager in Los Angeles after he left and went in the 70s. He worked for David Geffen, he managed the Eagles, Steely Dan, you name it. And then in the 80s, in the middle of all those federal investigations that we just talked about, in the middle of the mob being exposed, running the record industry on one-hour nightly specials on NBC Nightly News. Here comes Irving Azoff. He ends up taking over MCA records in the 80s during crazy, crazy federal investigations. And he continued to be plagued by mob rumors because he was fucking surrounded by them. And he was he ends up being associated to this thing called the network and figures like Salvatore Pacello, a Gambino man. So if you want to know more about that, again, you can head over to Patreon. I've got a little mini so that's just on Irving Azoff and his mafia ties, but absolutely nuts. So that's the man who in 1973 endorses Robert Kardashian when he opens RR Records. And Robert's business takes off pretty much right away because he's getting this endorsement from Irving fucking Azoff. And it gives Robert some serious flash, some serious cash, and some serious buying power, having this business swanning around with OJ Simpson and his brother, who's banging the ex-wife of Elvis' tour manager. So not long after he opens this RR, Radio and Records, he settles down into his own men's. They're very specific about that in all the literature. Ments. He gets a men's in Beverly Hills. Uh, and he heads to the horse race track one night in 1973 because he wants to blow off some steam. He wants to celebrate. And lucky Robert Kardashian runs into 17-year-old Mary, Kristen Mary Houghton. Kristen Mary Houghton, who you will come to know as Chris Jenner on day. 17. 17 the night they meet. Uh Kristen was young, but sadly already experienced in the kind of world that Robert moved in because her mother, um, who had raised Kristen as a single woman, had already been described by Kristen's friends. You can go and read this in Jerry Oppenheimer's book about the Kardashians. Um, but Kristen's friend, Chris Jenner's friends, when she was in high school, described her mother as pimping her daughter out to older and richer men and had told her that it was her job to seek a rich husband, not a college degree. Not even kidding. Very disgusting, very, very sad, very disgusting from her mother. So this leads Kristen at the time that she meets Robert, she's already dating this older golf pro who's like 10 years older than her because he's a golf pro and he's got this flashy name in Beverly Hills, Caesar Sinuto. Who again, her friends are like, yeah, her mom pimped her out to him, basically. Um, but that day in 1973, she's with Caesar Sinuto, she meets Robert Kardashian, cheats. They cheat together, apparently. That first night is what the friends say. So I I I don't know what that means, but you know, it's very questionable. Robert at this time is 27 or 28 years old. What the fuck? Yeah. So by 1973, Robert's 27 or 28. I don't I don't remember the day of his birthday.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

I no, no, can't no. If she is under the age of like 18, yeah, or even you're a fucking creep. Not only are you a creep, if it gets into the teens, you're a fucking you may as well be a pedophile. That person that is a child. Yep. That is a child. That is not a fully formed human. Your frontal lobe is nowhere near developing at that point. It is just trying to spark a fucking brain cell. Yep. What the fudge.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

How crazy is that? They cheat that night at the racetrack, is what his friends say. He's 27 or 28. Depends on the actual day of his birth, which I cannot remember off the top of my head. He was born in 1944, and Chris was born in 1955. So he's 11 years older than her. So he was either 27 or 28. She was 17 when they meet. Yeah, and they cheat together. Remember, keep that in mind. His friends, according to the Jerry Oppenheimer book, said they cheat together that night. They get together that night, physically cheat on her boyfriend. Okay. They said that the sparks flew instantly. They were boom, right there, right there, getting together right away. But the relationship wouldn't last because I kid you not, by 1974, Robert's telling people, A, she's too young for anything serious. He's obviously happy to have a physical relationship with her as an almost 30-year-old man, but he tells his friends she's too young for anything serious. So I'm gonna have to break it off. Yeah, you should see Connie's face. Yeah, I was just as baffled. Just as baffled as like, oh, you can sleep with a 17-year-old, but you can't marry the 17-year-old. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

What? Um, no, I'm just gonna have my flabbers aghast and I'm gonna listen. Because what isn't it nuts?

SPEAKER_00 37:50

It's fucking nuts. It's crazy. But there's another reason. There's another reason. Here you go. Get ready for your flabbers to be even more gassed. There's another, and I think this is probably the real reason that he broke up with her, was because right around early 1970s at the end of 1973, early 1974, Priscilla Presley comes into Robert's life as a single woman. She's hot. Robert thought so too. Because he dumped Chris for Priscilla. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

I would I would dump I would dump anyone for Priscilla too.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

She's hot.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

So Robert already knew Priscilla through his brother's. I think his brother was married to Joan. About that. Yeah. Yeah. I think um uh by this this is this this was one of the weird connections to me. This is considering the behaviors and the kind of things that you're seeing, but um Robert's brother Tom, by this point, I think is married to Joan Esposito, or he's been with Joan Esposito for a long time. Joan Esposito is the ex-wife of Joe Esposito, who is Elvis' best friend and his tour manager. So Priscilla BFFs with Joan Esposito, and that's how she gets into the Kardashians. At the end of 1973, she finalizes her divorce with Elvis Presley. By 1974, Robert Kardashian has dumped Chris and is dating Priscilla Frickin' Presley. Which, yeah, I get it. So Priscilla, again, newly on the market. She ends up with Robert Kardashian shortly after her divorce with Elvis. And that's the 1974 year is it ends up being quite a big year because not only did Robert Kardashian that year get to score one of the most beautiful women in the history of the like uh ever, uh 1974 was also the year that his brother and his business partner, because remember, he started RR with his brother Tom and another DJ guy. Uh, Tom gets arrested for felony bribery of a government official. A fucking fail.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

Yeah. Oh shit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Because as it turns out, Tom wasn't just working at RR with Robert, he was also the general manager of the family meat packing company, that great Western packing that we talked about. Uh yeah, Tom was managing it as the general manager, and it turns out that he was also bribing federal officials, federal inspectors to give the meat they produced higher scores than it actually deserved. Huge scam. Big scam. Pay off the inspector, sell low quality meat, maybe not even edible. This this could have been from sick cows, it could have been rotten, it could have been rancid, could have been processed through literal shit. Um, sell that to the American people at a higher price. And this is this is happening while they are fucking doing ABOC Hagopian, right? Like this is just this isn't crazy. So by 1974, the feds have investigated this huge scam that implicates five companies, one of which is the Kardashian Company. They've been bribing officials to run this huge scam. Tom gets arrested for it in 1974, charged with felony bribe of a government official, and gets a sentence of, of course, three years probation and a ten thousand dollar fine. But they do put the felony on his record. So he's a felony. You know what?

SPEAKER_01 40:50

That's the that's the most whitest response. It is such a white response. That is that is pastry puff like access to freedom.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

Crazy, crazy. And meanwhile, that 1974, Robert's running around Beverly Hills with his new multi-million dollar business, which starts getting accused of being a payola. There's articles in the newspaper, people are starting to write, like, RR can't be trusted. They're doing some payola stuff because by 1976, there's rumors that RR is pay to play. They're taking money to move music up and down the charts. They'll basically say, like, all right, so over the next eight weeks, we're gonna start you at number 32, and then we're gonna move you up slowly, and you're gonna pay us X amount per week, and we'll make it look like it's organically becoming more and more popular, and people will really like it and they'll bond with the artist, yada yada, yada. Gross, just just gross, just gross. And again, all coming back to Irving A's off, who's in RR all the time. He's being featured, he's always talking about it very favorably when he's asked about it, blah, blah, blah. But Robert's relationship with Priscilla Presley doesn't end up going as well as his business because by 1978, their connection fizzes out completely. Insiders claim that she was never that crazy about him to begin with. That one of Robert's best friends told Jerry Oppenheimer for this book. He was like, Robert was head over heels. He was obsessed with her. He was obsessed with getting married to her and like getting the Priscilla Presley. But he said Priscilla was bored. She was just bored and she couldn't get anybody else. And there's also there's this really uh, I don't know if I believe this story, but there's a story in the Oppenheimer book that while Priscilla and Robert would be making love, Elvis would call and he would be like off his face on drugs, and Priscilla would put the phone on the pillow and let him listen to her and Robert having sex. That's one of the stories that's told in the Oppenheimer book about their relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Rough. Yeah, very rough stuff. But essentially, they people said she was bored, she had nothing better to do, and you know, she was just playing with him. Others claim that Robert, what he actually liked about it was that apparently he got, and I quote, turned on by dominating women. That was a big thing. And they they claim that the reason that their relationship imploded was because he could not tame Priscilla. Essentially, he was not able to domesticate her.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

No, because this is such a fucking this no, this is my one of my fucking what do you call this? Is this my like thing? I just get so pissed off. Trigger like it's the thing where men are taught that you have to find a woman to dominate her. She has to be way up the top of the ladder, and you have to bring her all the way down to barefoot in the fucking kitchen, and that's how you be a man, and it's the only way that you're allowed to feel pleasure in yourself and fucking glit.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

100% it's very gross. Oh, just wait, just wait, Connie, because there's a story I'm gonna tell you a little bit later with Chris that's gonna make you hit the roof. You're gonna I had to get up and walk away from the computer when I read it. I had to get up and walk away. It's so bad.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Anyway, nothing to throw that's close to me.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

So apparently, Priscilla and Robert at the end of this relationship, she was bored. He he couldn't turn her into a housewife. There's a story in the Oppenheimer book about that says that apparently. Apparently, right towards the end of their relationship, sometime around 77, 78, Priscilla went, Okay, you know what? I'll just fucking try one time. And she apparently made this huge meal from scratch for Robert. She liked worked all day and she tried to get everything perfect. She gives it to him. He bitches about everything, complains about everything, criticizes every single thing she made. And allegedly, for her, what she allegedly told people was, all right, that's it. Fuck you. We're done. We're absolutely done. And she told him at that point, I'm never gonna get remarried while Elvis is still alive. So there's no point in doing this anymore if you want a wife, because it won't be me.

SPEAKER_02 44:31

What a fucking cock. What do you fucking mean, bro? Like you what? Yes, fuck him. Yeah. Pick him in the teeth. What do you mean? So girl. She cooked all that food.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

She did all of it. And you want to be a dick about it, bro? You could pay for a fucking sheep to feed you guys each day. And you're worried about making the most beautiful woman of the era like cook for you. And it's not good enough. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

Yeah. It's insane. He's such a prick. He's such a prick. He's a prick. Robert Kardashian was uh an egotistical, misogynistic prick. 100%. 100%. Very gross. Very, very gross behavior. But so that's somewhere around 1977, 1978. The dates are kind of hard to pin down. But what we do know is that by 1978, Robert gets on the telephone and calls up Kristen Houghton, who by this point is a flight attendant, which I'm sure he thinks is super hot.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

No, because this is what men do. They they try to go for the big tuna and they're like, must eat big tuna. And then the big tuna's like, um, I'm my own fish. I will fish wherever the fuck I want to be.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

I'm the big fish in this pond.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

And and that then they have to go back for for women that center men because those are the most dangerous to other women and the ones that prop up shitty men.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Yeah. But I guess at least we should be grateful that that at least Chris is legally aged by this point, because there's been a few years. So thankfully she's not frontal lobe adult, but she's legally an adult by this point.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

I mean, like 70s uh 70s flight attendants, no offense to you know, the ones that were doing it to get through school, but a lot of them were doing it so they could fuck airline pilots and meet rich people.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

So I think that was probably the gig. I think that's probably the gig. But what it's got this is this part is just kind of sad to me.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

You're you're gonna meet rich people, you if you especially working for first class.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Yeah, and I'm sure that was the game, I'm sure that was the goal. Um, because Chris, this Chris is happy to talk about this. She doesn't talk about the horse track meeting in 1973. She makes it sound like this was their first meeting when she was a flight attendant, but this was not their first meeting. Um, but oh this this again, this part's sad. So 1978, Priscilla's like, no thanks. So Robert goes running back to her. Chris immediately moves into Robert's house, like like within days or weeks, moves in. Like, I think they said it was it within days, she was in his house and then just never left. And she starts spending money like crazy before they're even married. She's buying like the one story says he got pissed because he came home and she had bought a three thousand dollar belt, which three thousand dollars in 1978. That's a that's a lot. You could buy a house for that in some places of the country in 1978. That's crazy. And he's he's complaining to his friends about it. Did you want to say something? No, no, just horrified, just a horrified look on her face. So, right from the start, Robert's complaining, she's spending my money like water, she's gotta learn about money. She's there's no way we can settle down together because she's gotta learn about money. But he doesn't listen to himself because they do get married, and it does get worse after the wedding. And what I did forget to mention is that while all this is going on, right, he's running around in 1978, he's got this business, his brother's been arrested, he's got this, he's been dumped by Priscilla, he's got this girl. Robert's running around advertising himself as a born-again Christian. He starts putting Jesus fishes on his car. And remember, what were our first two episodes about? The family's crazy evangelical beliefs, the crazy religious history. Yeah, he's driving around with a Rolls Royce with Jesus fishes on it, the irony. But anyway, 1978, Chris and Robert get married in a lavish LA church ceremony. It's grand, especially for the 70s. Um, and it brings up what I think is kind of a good metaphor for their marriage because it's like flashy and beautiful, but on the inside, everything is shit. Because apparently, as soon as they got married, Chris's spending goes absolutely insane. And she, as they have children, it just gets worse and worse because then it justifies her to spend more and more and more. By the time they're divorced, she says that it costs her $37,000 a month to take care of herself and the children because of her spending habits and the amount of money she needs to live per month. Yeah, yeah. Out of fucking control.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

It makes logically no sense.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Yeah, $37,000.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Like you're, you know, you're used to a certain lifestyle in terms of like living and you've got like there's like an alimony thing. But I I don't know how people can justify that kind of spending each month.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

I don't either. I don't think she did in the end. I think they bought it.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

Like, what food are you eating that costs that much?

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Well, five star restaurants, probably.

SPEAKER_01 48:52

I'm guessing when your car runs out of gas, like what the fuck?

SPEAKER_00 48:56

Yeah, yeah. But Chris is not the only, I will not, I'm not, I'm I will say this. Chris is not the only bad one in this relationship because Connie, you're gonna hit the fucking roof when you hear this. Robert, a man whose favorite film was allegedly Stepford Wives, uh, a man who, and I quote, according to the people that knew him, liked dominating his wives. He decides, well, she's gonna spend all this money. I'm gonna hammer her down into the housewife that I want. And sources said, according to this Jerry Oppenheimer book, that Robert would make Chris listen to how to be a housewife tapes every week that he would then sit down and quiz her on over the weekends to make sure that she was listening to how to be a housewife tapes so that she would be a good and perfect housewife. And it was all about like how to make sure you look good for your man, how to throw parties, how to clean the house, how to serve him. Not even kidding, not even kidding. I told you, I totally got his face. I told you, I told you you were gonna get really angry when I told you about this part. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

That's that's akin to like torture.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

Yeah, it's bad.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

That like and and not like you know, like physical torture, but that's like psychological manipulation. That is that is narcissistic abuse, yeah, 100%. And like, and and I don't like Krista either. Like that that lady's a motherfucking narcissist to herself, but that the reinforcement of the behaviors, because like even when narcissistic people get with narcissistic people, they're reinforcing their shitty behaviors on each other and and reinforcing that that self-loathing fucking behavior. Oh my god, it's so bad. Was he quizzing her at the end of the week? Was he also listening to them, or did he get like a sheet to go with them so that he could just quiz her and no answers?

SPEAKER_00 50:44

Could have been both, could have been both. There's no there were so many, so much sick media out there.

SPEAKER_01 50:48

Now I want to find them. I want to find the tapes. I want to find the tapes so bad.

SPEAKER_00 50:52

See if I can find the names of them.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

Oh man, I'm so mad about that.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

It's in the Jerry Oppenheimer book, and they talk about it on page six as well. If anybody did like, I don't want to buy a whole book. Page six did a deep dive into their relationship and they mention these tapes. I I tend to believe this story because the people who told this story were Robert's friends. These were people who were friends with Robert during this time, and they don't like Chris. And they're not saying this in a complimentary way. They're they're saying, look, Chris sucked. She was a narcissistic bitch, she was a money-grubbing, fucking horrible person who abused her kids, but he also trying to help her.

SPEAKER_01 51:28

This was his way of helping her because she was so fucking useless.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

The quotes aren't the quotes. I'm actually very surprised. The quotes aren't that way. The quotes are very much like it was pretty fucked up. He wanted to dominate women and he wanted to like make a Stepford wife. It was pretty gross. That that's the way they make it sound, these friends. They're like the whole thing, the whole thing, the the way the people who are around it describe it, like just the whole thing is a Jerry Springer disaster mess from the start. It's just trailer park with money. Like 100%. It's trailer park boys with money. Just a mess. Absolute mess. Um, people around them immediately noticed how bad the relationship was. Again, on both sides, people criticize both of them. They say that he was controlling, that he would scream his head off and he had to have his way and he wanted a woman to serve him. He didn't treat them like people. People admit that, but they also say that Chris basically from day one, uh, Robert's pastor ends up being one of the first people to meet Chris when they get back together. And the first time the pastor saw the two of them together, the pastor said, She seems completely uninterested in anything but the money. She goes through the motions, she does what's expected of her, but she does not seem interested in anything else in this life but money. She doesn't even seem interested in Robert. So it very much seems right off the bat, she's just been told you get with a rich man, you choke down whatever you have to do, you do the bare, like you do whatever he wants you to do, and you get the money and run. Like that's that's what it sounds like to me. That's what it sounds like to me. And they acknowledge that he was only interested in turning her into a Stepford housewife. So the whole thing's just nasty. By the end of the 80s, Chris is openly leading an affair. Openly by 1989, she's in an affair with Todd Waterman, a soccer player, and she's going to parties in Beverly Hills with Todd Waterman, and she's saying, This is my boyfriend, and he's she's got an apartment, she pays all the bills on. Like this is she's sugar mama openly, all around town. Yeah, yeah. And apparently he was not the first, um, because the four Kardashian children were all born by 1987, and this is 1989. Uh, Chloe, according to Robert, was born during a time in which he and Chris had nothing to do with each other sexually, that they were pretty much living apart by by like the mid 80s, is what Robert claimed. So he's he's the one who started that rumor. Um, after the Todd Waterman thing, Robert can't really ignore all the affairs anymore, so they start separating and getting a divorce. And Robert starts keeping a journal during this time, which outlines what he says, because again, I everyone's like, well, they're Robert's journals, so they must be real. But you guys have to remember these journal entries were created to be shown to a judge during divorce proceedings. So that he could have written anything in here because he knew someone else was gonna be reading these. But it was a series of journal entries. I've put some of them on Patreon. I've done a couple videos on one of them on TikTok, but they're like horrific. It talks about Chris beating Kim, making Kim leave the house when she's sick because she just doesn't want her in the house while she's sick, and Chris is gonna have her boyfriend there. There's there's stories where Robert alleges that during this time, 1989-1990, he would come home and the four children who are, I don't know, like 11 and younger at this point, like very young children. All four of them have been left alone. They haven't been fed. He's gotta like make dinner. She hasn't even scheduled like anybody to come take care of them. Um, there's stories about the kids being made to sleep on a couch in the bedroom while she has sex with Todd Waterman, uh, making the kids sit in the back seat while she's fooling around with Tom Todd Waterman in the front seat. There's like so many horrific, horrific stories that Robert lists over journal entries for years and years and years and years and years. Chris doesn't seem to have uh refuted these claims because if you go and read her memoirs, she says in her memoirs, I feel horrific shame over what I did. I was a horrible mother. She acknowledges she did the affair. She's vague about it, but she says basically, like, I I was horrible. So kind of wonder how much of this is real. It's some of it might be pretty real, like the ass beatings and stuff, because it would make sense. If you look at the way Kim Kardashian is now, it would make sense if she had a mother who was like beating her and you know, exposing her to sexual things too young and just like basically not raising her. It would it would make a lot of sense. So Robert and Chris go through a nasty divorce, but they settle it by 1991. She's demanding $37,000 a month, blah blah blah. They settled the divorce in 91 and they said that they were cordial and friendly for the rest of their lives, but that that's that's absolutely not true. That is as you'll see in a second, that's not how it played out. Like everything Kardashian says, not the truth. So, so while that's going on in his relationship, Robert's also got a lot of shit going on in the music industry. So while he's dealing with this crumbling marriage with his wife, he begins the dodgiest part of his career. He sells RR to Hart Hanks Communication in 1979, and he goes on to form a number of other businesses, most of them backed by Azoff and with OJ Simpson. Because this whole time, OJ Simpson's been at Kardashian's house, they've been going on vacations together. Uh, O.J. Simpson came to his wedding, came to Kardashian's wedding to Chris Jenner. They're super, super, super buddy, buddy, buddy. And it's interesting that Azov had the time to back anything in the 1980s because shortly after he was head made the head of MCA, he got the label embroiled in a huge, huge, huge, huge scandal. Because when Azov was made the head of MCA, the first thing he did was hire Salvatore the Swindler Pacello. And this guy's not just any mobster, he's an associate of the fucking Gambino family. Pacello's job, Azov claimed, as he brought him in as a record label executive, was to help restructure MCA records, which was close to bankruptcy at this point. And when it happened, when the when this was made, it was in the papers in Los Angeles. People went, how the fuck could this this guy who's allegedly a mafioso restructure a music label? That's pretty fucking shady.

SPEAKER_01 57:12

As soon as throwing drug money, throwing drug money at it. That's what he was doing.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

Yeah. Um Pasillo, Pacello immediately attracts the attention of the feds because they're tracking the whole of the Gambino family. They have been for years and years and years. The Gambino family, you guys, is the one that John Gotti was the head of. Like big, big deal. It's a big deal. So the federal investigators start looking into MCA even more. I don't know how he gets away with this, but essentially what happens is there's a huge, huge, huge falling out in 1985 because Pacello he gets tasked with moving 4.7 million records for MCA. Okay. And they're these what's called cutout records. So back when a record store, like when an album got released for an artist, whatever they didn't sell, they were able to send back to the label. So the labels had these huge warehouses filled with records that hadn't been sold, and they would cut the corner of the cover, and that's why they're called cutouts. So in 1984, MCA says, We have all these cutouts. Pacello, you go and offload these cutouts. Don't know why they want someone from the mob to offload the cutouts, but that's what happens. Pacello finds this guy named Lamont and Lamont says, Yeah, bring me the records. I'll take them. Okay, fine. Pacello shows up with the records. Lamont goes, Well, I can't pay you for all of these. These are shit. Half of them are unusable. They've just probably been left in the heat or something. It's really bad stock. And Pacello says, MCA wants their money, Lamont. You give it to them now. And Lamont's like, nah, I'm not, you're ripping me off. I'm not going to give you the whole thing. In 1985, and you can go listen to my my little mini sode on Irving Azov if you want more about this little thing. But in 1985, Picello basically arranges for Lamont to have his face smashed in by a couple of tufts for the mob. And Lamont ends up in fucking witness protection with his name change being moved across the country by the feds. Because the feds, it turns out, have been wiretapping MCA, where Azov is now the head. They've been wiretapping Picello. They've been wiretapping all these other people. It exposes this whole thing called the network that Azov is a part of, these promoters who work at the direction and the benefit of the mafia, trafficking women, trafficking drugs, trafficking weapons, all of this kind of stuff. And this attorney, this U.S. attorney, Mark Rudnik, just becomes a bulldog. He will not let this go. He's like, MCA is funding the mafia, and it's Azov, and I'm coming for you after this Pacello incident. Azov's ties to the mafia get exposed. And not only had he hired Picello, it turns out he was also tied to Morris Levy, Levi, which we talked about earlier with Roulette Records that got taken down for being part of the mob. Azov also got MCA records from Lou Wasserman, who had close personal ties to Ronald Reagan and the mob. And then Joe Isgrow as well, who Joe Isgrow got caught on the street by a news camera crew, Joe Isgrow, a MCA executive, in a meeting in a Gambino house in New York. Like there's it's absolutely crazy. And it wasn't niche knowledge. By 19 the early 1980s, NBC Nightly News was running hour-long deep dives onto this scandal about MCA being in bed with the mafia. There's a story about a news team accidentally running into the feds outside of one of the MCA meetings with the Gambino family with Joe Isgro. I mean, it was common knowledge. The news crew ended up fighting with the FBI out on the street, going like, no, no, you gotta let us cover it. No, no, you gotta let us cover it. No, no, you're gonna blow our cover. Like the it was in the open, this stuff's happening. And this is when Azoff reaches out to Robert Kardashian in 1986 and says, Here you go, buddy, come work with me. Gives Robert Kardashian his own branch of MCA. While MCA is in all of this controversy with the mob, you find out that the mob literally works inside MCA as executives. Robert Kardashian comes in. Azoff gives him a radio syndication network of his own, of which Robert Kardashian, one of the first shows he puts on, is OJ Simpson, an OJ Simpson Breakfast Show. Big fucking deal. He becomes president. He has his little card, it's like president of radio syndication, MCA. It's a big deal. And it's suspicious timing. It's very, very suspicious timing. Uh, but unfortunately, it changes because out of nowhere, out of nowhere, the Department of Justice announces Mark Rudnik, that attorney, that bulldog attorney, who's like, I'm getting you guys for this. The Department of Justice all of a sudden fires him. And it's announced in a little teeny tiny corner of the paper. They said, you know what? He pointed too many fingers. He was making too many accusations. So we fired him, and that's it. And the investigation into the MCA is announced as closed. Just all of a sudden, out of nowhere, even though Azov had gone and been investigated, he had been interviewed by Rudnik, and Rudnik had told the papers, yeah, he told me what's going on. He's ready to flip. We're gonna expose everybody. And then all of a sudden, nope, the DOJ dismisses the whole thing and shuts it down. Just poop, shuts it right down at the end of the 80s. And then Azov leaves after this is all handled. Very suspicious, very, very suspicious.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:02

I just all I can think of is like who paid who, first of all. Who paid who? But who hired who?

unknown 1:02:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:11

Because it's giving off that vibe of like, oh, actually, we could hire a bunch of these people and have our have our fingers in all these pies of manipulation.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:20

Yep, yep. Because Robert Kardashian, I'm not gonna go into all the ins and outs of this, but during this window of time, the 80s, um, he had sold RR, remember, um, and when he's working with MCA, he starts like four other businesses, which are mostly like music, music and movies. It's like the music that you watch, music videos being played in the movie theater before movies. It's like all these weird little tiny businesses which all somehow explode and make millions and millions and millions of dollars for him while he's working with these people. You know what I mean? It's it it you know, it makes one wonder. It makes one wonder where that money was coming.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:55

It's like uh they can use all of this for data collection of like human behavior. Also that right so like like how Facebook sells off data. You've got these guys record taking record of the data of what people watch, what people listen to, you know, what people are interested in, what they can push people to listen, all that sort of stuff. And that's kind of handy if you're in in like the shitty arms of government that want to learn how to keep the population under control.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:22

That's what I yeah. It's and again, with this is all just speculation. This is just like things that we think about when we read about these things, but it's very, very weird. It's very, very weird, especially because again, if you trace that relationship, Lou Wasserman, who was the head of MCA until mob ties forced the board to fire him, and then they hired Irving Azoff, but Lou Wasserman was BFFs with Ronald Reagan before Ronald Reagan was governor, before Ronald Reagan was president. They had been very close, apparently, Wasserman and Reagan, when Reagan was still just an actor. So it's very, very weird that around the time Reagan becomes governor and president, all of a sudden they can just get the the DOJ to shut down an investigation. It's interesting. It's it's uh very interesting to me. Yeah. Very, very interesting, especially when you see later there's some presidential pardons that some Kardashians are gonna get and all that kind of stuff. But it's it's very, it's very, very, very, very interesting. It's very, very interesting. And somehow, somehow, some way, these ties to organized crime bodies within the music industry would not be what tainted Robert Kardashian's legacy forever. Somehow, somehow being tied to the Gambino crime family, not the shadiest thing Robert Kardashian would ever do, because that would come down to OJ Simpson and the murder trial of the century in 1994, which is where we are gonna start the fourth and final episode of this series, deep diving into the Kardashians. Yay! So exciting. So exciting, so fun, a murder trial and an abused woman. We're gonna go into OJ's relationship with the Kardashian family, not just his relationship uh with Nicole, because Nicole's relationship with the Kardashian family really, really, really, really matters. Because ignoring what happens in 1994, Nicole was failed by the Kardashians big time, big time. And I genuinely partially blame them for what happens because they you know they may not have held the knife, but they sure the fuck did nothing to stop it. Um and in my personal opinion, Nicole was abandoned by that whole family, especially by Chris, who was allegedly her best friend at the time. Uh, and I genuinely believe, and I think that I can demonstrate this, uh, that the Kardashians basically just kept their mouth shut about horrific things that OJ was doing so that they could keep earning money off of OJ, whose celebrity status Robert Kardashian used to kind of up everything from the yogurt shops he ran to that stupid radio syndication job that he got from Irving Aesoff. It's the final momentum, I think, that really shapes the Kardashians that we see today and shows you just how fucking absurd and cruel and just soulless they really are, because you got Robert Kardashian. Driving around in a Rolls-Royce with a Jesus fish on the bumper, defending a fucking murderer who's been abusing multiple women in his life for decades. For decades. It's disgusting. It's horrible. It shows how soulless and depraved the family is, but it won't be the last horrible thing they do because in the next episode, we'll also be taking a look at the more recent Kardashian scandals, including endless trademark theft, Caitlin Jenner killing someone, and Kim's endless lottery, drop ship scams, and crypto scams. So it's gonna be a good one. Make sure you're following Scandal Queens so you don't miss a single beat. If you want to get an even deeper look at scandals of the Kardashian family, or if you want to get the next episode before everyone else, please join me over on patreon.com slash scandalqueens where I post essays, videos, live reactions, all kinds of good stuff that helps you deconstruct the toxic cult of celebrity. Um, for more psychological perspective, you can head over to the real ebjohnson.substack.com for articles, guides, and essays on narcissism, relationships, and society. Uh for everything else, make sure you're following me on social media at the real e b johnson on everything. TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, you name it. And Connie, I want to thank you for being here today. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I know this is really heavy stuff. I know it's like messy.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:14

I find this is fun. This is like this is my little like ha ha. This is a good time. I love doing these with you. I love this every episode. Like, I would rather listen to the autistic person do the deep dive than like anyone else. This is like I don't even follow celebrity stuff, and I'm over here like, oh my god, this is I'm on the edge of my seat. Like, I cannot wait for the next episode. This is great. I love it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:39

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate it. I couldn't do this. This is so much stuff to try to get through to try to like parse through a loan. So thank you for staying up late and hanging out and helping me do this. Because what a swamp. What a swamp.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:52

Yeah. Um yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:55

Thank you, thank you, thank you. If you love the episode, don't forget to go and leave a five-star review over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It just helps the other weirdos kind of find me and helps them deconstruct celebrity worship and see how serious this stuff is and how deep the rabbit hole goes.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:11

And if you got this far and you're not giving us a five-star review, I don't know what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:17

Then what are you doing? You gotta give us a five star review, please. Anyway, that's it for us, folks. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Connie. Thank you, everyone who's listening. And until next week, keep your secrets close and your receipts closer. Stay scandalous, queens. Bye bye.